Jese Rodriguez has the tempo-setting, game-changing potential to get fans queuing up to watch Stoke City , says Spanish football expert Graham Hunter.

It wasn’t all that long ago that Jese was breaking through at Real Madrid, keeping current favourite Isco on the bench and being tipped for stardom with club and country.

It is fair to say the last three years haven’t gone to plan, with a horrendous knee injury followed by difficult spells at Paris St Germain and Las Palmas.

But what he showed, believes Hunter, should still be enough for everyone at Stoke to be very excited.

He said: “The physical training of the Premier League should be very good for him and it will help that the manager can speak a little bit of Spanish.

“I’m not saying it will be easy. It’s very different in terms of culture and climate, even from Paris, than he would have ever experienced in his life. He’s still only 24.

“He needs to be fit and he needs to be focused but if he can get back to the form he showed at Real Madrid – creative, cheeky, explosive, technically very gifted – then people will be flocking to watch Stoke. He’s that good.

“They have brought in quality so it will all depend if the timing is right. I really hope it’s a success.”

Read More

A move to Stoke at this stage of Jese’s career would have seemed outlandish when he made his first steps in the senior game, breaking records for Real Madrid’s B side.

Jese was tipped for stardom as he played for Spain at youth level.

It wasn’t easy getting a chance in an attacking department featuring Cristiano Ronaldo, Angel di Maria, Mesut Ozil, Kaka, Gonzalo Higuain and Karim Benzema but he always backed himself, it turned out with good reason.

Hunter said: “When Jese burst onto the scene at Real Madrid he was absolutely exceptional. He’s one of those footballers with cheek and creativity and before that brutal injury he was also very explosive.

“There was a time when he was scoring for Real Madrid Castilla – he got 22 in 38 – when he gave a long interview which included criticism of Jose Mourinho. He didn’t feel he was getting the chance he should in view of his goals or the fact he had come through the system.

“Yet when he was promoted by Carlo Ancelotti it became clear he wasn’t simply a goal scorer, he would link play and had the ingenuity to go past a man. He was always looking for ways to score.

“He was the type of footballer that would change the tempo of a match and get supporters on the edge of their seats. He had great pace and the drive and it was telling that Vicente del Bosque was talking about including him in the World Cup squad.

“This was the Spain team that were reigning world and European champions and to be in consideration, having played relatively so few games for Real Madrid, was no small thing.”

Read More

A freak incident in a 9-1 aggregate Champions League win over Schalke in February 2014, however, would put a big dent in his progression.

He would spend nine months out and even though he came back into the squad under Zinedine Zidane , things would never be the same again. Perhaps a second career in hip hop – or reggaeton to be exact, under the stage name Jey M – didn’t help either.

An injury against Schalke derailed Jese's time at Real Madrid.

Hunter explained: “It was an innocuous challenge that would keep him out for so long. Maybe there was a little bit of a rush to come back and he had an infection which set him back. On top of that there was a fire at his house which can’t have helped the mental stain. He ended up being out for more than he needed to be.

“It was that explosive pace, the ability to get across the length of the pitch like Gareth Bale and destabilise an opponent that maybe were undermined by the injury. Real Madrid didn’t look particularly like his second career in reggaeton either and there were suggestions he didn’t have that same drive that he had shown when he was coming through.”

Jey M released a single – Yo Sabia , with the chorus, ‘Let’s make love like it’s the last time’ – last summer and Jese moved on, joining Paris St Germain on a five-year contract for £22m.

Jese Rodriguez has a stage name as Jey M in reggaeton.

“Unfortunately at Paris St Germain he bumped into a coach with whom he didn’t see eye to eye,” said Hunter. “Unai Emery is very, very strict about team patterns while Jese is a guy who craves the freedom to cause positive anarchy.

“Going home to Las Palmas should have been the perfect move but he walked into a club that had real disunity, the coach was falling out with the board and it didn’t work out.”

There is hope in Spain that it will be different this time.

Hunter said: “Jese might be too young to have seen Mark Hughes play for Barcelona but he will have asked around and there aren’t just fond memories, there is a lot of respect.”